Post -anything depression

I am starting out with some photos of my beautiful family since some of you haven't seen us in months. I just have been so busy parenting and trying to take care of life that sitting down to blog hasn't even been on the "to do" list.

We have been busy with Classical Conversations with our homeschooling, learning, growing, trying to figure out how to organize our house and visit our family and develop deeper relationships with our friends.

Our family is learning and growing but I realize that we have a lot of post-even depression.

People have heard of postnatal depression, we all know of the grief after the loss of a loved one, and many in the adoption field have heard of post-adoption depression.

If you would have asked me during this process I wouldn't have identified myself as depressed during the first year of the children home. I had a hard time after Grandpa died, but that is understandable.

Lately I have come to the conclusion that stress, loss and grief takes many different forms and causes many reactions, all very different from person to person. Loss and grief can be about unexpected things and appear in unexpected ways.

For some of the kids the grief is that I'm not like their other mother figure, or little cultural things here and there over and over that they miss. The fact that we insist that they learn our way of doing certain things in the house when they feel like their old way was quite good.

Around here the most common reaction to grief and loss is anger.

Although many times we are complimented on how happy the children seem when out in public, and they are happy in many ways, at home we see a lot of anger. When we're out of the house the things they grieve are not so much in the forefront of their mind and experiences - they can concentrate on other things which aren't so intimately entwined in things related to family relationships.

I should have figured it out sooner, but I now realize that I've been having my own tantrums for many of the same reasons. I am angry at some of the things I have lost. I never for a moment want to stop being my children's mother - but I miss things.

I mourn for the days:
When my house was a place where no one was hit.
When people didn't yell at each other at my house.
Where if I had to spend my time with people who were being spiteful, mean and miserable I could go home and feel better.
Where my choices and actions weren't constantly criticized and used as excuses for bad behavior.
When I had time and emotional energy available to really pay attention to my husband and when he had the same for me in the evenings
For that matter - time to just talk to each other and be heard and understood by each other.
When I could deal with adolescent fluctuations with dignity and grace.
When my husband and I didn't have to disagree about things like telelvision and DS usge.
I didn't lay in bed with my stomach in a knot worrying that someone was going to treat me spiteful and mean before I even got to breakfast.
When I could formulate a sentence and most people understood what I was saying instead of the times where nothing I say seems to make sense to those around me and/or they tell me that what I said was the reason why they did something atrocious.

I guess I never envisioned so much strife in my own household. I mourn the change in my relationship with my husband and the fact that my children are angry at each other and at me on a regular basis. Some of it is normal, but part of me just screams and stamps my feet (and I am childish enough that sometimes that is literal...) when my hopes and dreams are crushed in little every day ways... like finding bills and trash smooshed into a plastic bag and shoved on a bookshelf. Or finding out that a child kicked a smaller child HARD instead of asking me for help. Or for when I could turn to my spouse for help or a listening ear and he wasn't worn out so thin that he could give it to me.


Now that I realize what it is I'm so angry about, I hope I can come to terms with it. Mourn it if I have to. Acknowledge that some of those things are part of my pre-older-child-adoption life. That some of the things would have been inevitable with any type of parenting. And then I need to pray about what God wants to see in my family and start working on the new, which will be beautiful and good in it's own way.